Climate change adaptation and work

Description

Resilient climate futures will depend on how well economies and societies adapt to climate change, i.e., the unavoidable impacts that we’re already seeing, and which will increase in the next 20-30 years. How climate change affects work and employment is mainly studied by looking at climate mitigation, analysing how the economy becomes net zero, and more concretely how companies are restructuring. Much less is known about climate change adaptation and work despite the fact that excessive heat exposure is a threat to workers and their health, and well-being, and that adaptation work is often under, unpaid or unfree.

Research overview

In this study, we want to understand the extent to which businesses have started adaptation measures and to what extent workers are already involved in the design of these measures as well as affected by their resulting changes.

We want to understand if workers are aware of the need for adaptation, if they fear the lack of adaptation, and what sacrifices personally and in their workplaces they are prepared to make for climate adaptation.

Through a survey with workers, we will answer the following research questions:

• Where are workers already affected by climate impacts, particularly in jobs exposed to nature and weather?
• Have workers been trained to deal with occupational heat stress?
• Does this differ among sectors?
• How are adaptation measures designed and decided upon within organisations?
• How are these affecting the work patterns?
• To what extent have climate impacts [foremost extreme weather] impacted productivity?
• What is already happening within companies regarding climate adaptation?
• Have more general adaption methods been introduced, like investments, asset protection, new technology (e.g. automatic shutters), insurance?
• What people-centric adaptation actions' (e.g. different working hours, better outdoor equipment, better H&S training that includes heat-health awareness training etc.) have been applied?
• Do companies make adequate investments to enhance workers’ adaptive capacity, boost resilience and foster sustainable development?
• What jobs and skills do we need to increase organisations' people-centric adaptation measures and to upskill the workforce that can specifically enable and implement adaptation?

Contact

Professor Vera Trappmann

This project is funded by Leeds University Business School’s Climate Change and Environmental Research Fund.